Abstract
AbstractWe study a parent's demand for gratitude from his child. We view this demand as an intervening variable between the parent's earnings and the incidence of child labor. The demand for gratitude arises from the desire of a parent to receive care and support from his child late in life, while the inclination of the child to provide this support during his adulthood is determined by how the child was treated by his parent during childhood. Specifically, we model the child's gratitude as an inverse function of the intensity of his labor in childhood. We show that when we keep the child's (imputed) wage constant, the intensity of child labor decreases with the parent's earnings. However, when we make the child's (imputed) wage a function of the parent's earnings, then the outcome can be different. With the help of a numerical example, we show that the pattern of child labor related to the parent's earnings can be U-shaped.
Highlights
We inquire why a parent might use or refrain from using child labor
An interesting implication of the preceding line of reasoning is that the incidence of the “wealth paradox” of child labor, namely that, as documented for example in the case of rural households in Pakistan and Ghana, the children of land-rich parents work more than the children of land-poor parents (Bhalotra and Heady, 2003), could be partially explained, or further supported, by the absence of a check on child labor that arises from a desire to “acquire” gratitude
Another interesting implication is that an increase in income will not in and of itself be a “cure” to the problem of child labor if, over some range, rising income weakens the gratitude-based incentive of parents to refrain from making children work; the notion that higher income will automatically and consistently eradicate child labor may not be correct
Summary
We inquire why a parent might use or refrain from using child labor. What we find is based on a parent’s demand for gratitude from his child, which we model as an intervening variable between the parent’s earnings and the incidence of child labor. The term (1 − h) represents the gratitude of the child towards the parent, taken to be a function of the intensity of the child’s labor during childhood: it is a measure of the value accorded by the child to providing support for the parent, incorporating the idea that the lighter the work burden during childhood, the greater the gratitude. The extent of this valuation is “engineered” by the parent when he chooses the level of h in the first period of his life.
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